.\" $Header$ -*-nroff-*-
.\" Purpose: ROFF man page for ncecat
.\" Usage:
.\" nroff -man ~/nco/man/ncecat.1 | less
.TH NCECAT 1
.SH NAME
ncecat \- netCDF Ensemble Concatenator
.SH SYNTAX
ncecat [\-3] [\-4] [\-5] [\-6] [\-7] [\-A] [\-\-bfr
.IR sz_byt ] [\-C] [\-c]
[\-\-cmp
.IR cmp_sng ]
[\-\-cnk_byt
.IR sz_byt ] [\-\-cnk_csh
.IR sz_byt ] [\-\-cnk_dmn 
.IR nm,sz_lmn ]
[\-\-cnk_map 
.IR map ]
[\-\-cnk_min
.IR sz_byt ]
[\-\-cnk_plc 
.IR plc ]
[\-\-cnk_scl 
.IR sz_lmn ] [\-D 
.IR dbg_lvl ]
[\-d 
.IR dim ,[
.IR min ][,[
.IR max ]]]
[-F] [--fl_fmt=fmt] [\-G
.IR gpe_dsc ]
[\-g  
.IR grp [,...]]
[\-\-gaa
.IR att_name=
.IR att_val ]]
[\-\-gad 
.IR att1 [,...]]
[\--gag]
[\-H] [\-h] [\-\-hdr_pad
.IR sz_byt ] [\-\-hpss_try]
[\-L 
.IR dfl_lvl ] 
[\-l 
.IR path ]
[\-M] [\-\-mrd] [\-\-msa] [\-n 
.IR loop ]
[\-\-no_cll_msr] [\-\-no_frm_trm] [\-\-no_tmp_fl] [\-O] [\-p 
.IR path ]
[\-\-qnt
.IR var1 [,
.IR var2 [,...]]=
.IR prc ]]
[\-\-qnt_alg
.IR alg_nm]
[\-R] [\-r] [\-\-ram_all] [\-t
.IR thr_nbr ]
[\-u 
.IR ulm_nm ]
[\-\-uio] [\-\-unn] [\-v 
.IR var [,...]]
[\-X 
.IR box ] 
[\-x] 
.I input-files
.I output-file
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
.B ncecat
concatenates an arbitrary number of input files into a
single output file.
Input files are glued together by creating a record dimension in the
output file. 
Input files must be the same size.
Each input file is stored consecutively as a single record in the output
file.
Each variable (except coordinate variables) in each input file becomes
one record in the same variable in the output file. 
Coordinate variables are not concatenated, they are instead simply
copied from the first input file to the output-file.
Thus, the size of the output file is the sum of the sizes of the input
files. 
.PP
Consider five realizations, 
.BR 85a.nc ,
.BR 85b.nc , \...
.B 85e.nc
of 1985 predictions from the same climate model.
Then 
.B "ncecat 85?.nc 85_ens.nc"
glues the individual realizations
together into the single file, 
.BR 85_ens.nc .
If an input variable was dimensioned [
.BR lat ,
.BR "lon" ],
it
will have
dimensions [
.BR record ,
.BR "lat" ,
.BR lon ]
in
the output file.
A restriction of 
.B ncecat
is that the hyperslabs of the processed
variables must be the same from file to file.
Normally this means all the input files are the same size, and contain
data on different realizations of the same variables.
.SH EXAMPLES
.PP
Consider a model experiment which generated five realizations of one
year of data, say 1985.
You can imagine that the experimenter slightly perturbs the
initial conditions of the problem before generating each new solution.  
Assume each file contains all twelve months (a seasonal cycle) of data
and we want to produce a single file containing all the seasonal cycles.
Here the numeric filename suffix denotes the experiment number
(\c
.I not
the month):
.RS
ncecat 85_01.nc 85_02.nc 85_03.nc 85_04.nc 85_05.nc 85.nc
.br
ncecat 85_0[1-5].nc 85.nc
.br
ncecat \-n 5,2,1 85_01.nc 85.nc
.RE
These three commands produce identical answers.
The output file, 
.BR 85.nc ,
is five times the size as a single
.IR input-file .
It contains 60 months of data (which might or might not be stored in the
record dimension, depending on the input files).

.\" NB: Append man_end.txt here
.\" $Header$ -*-nroff-*-
.\" Purpose: Trailer file for common ending to NCO man pages
.\" Usage: 
.\" Append this file to end of NCO man pages immediately after marker
.\" that says "Append man_end.txt here"
.SH AUTHOR
.B NCO
manual pages written by Charlie Zender and originally formatted by Brian Mays.

.SH "REPORTING BUGS"
Report bugs to <http://sf.net/bugs/?group_id=3331>.

.SH COPYRIGHT
Copyright \(co 1995-present Charlie Zender
.br
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
The full documentation for
.B NCO
is maintained as a Texinfo manual called the 
.B NCO Users Guide.
Because 
.B NCO
is mathematical in nature, the documentation includes TeX-intensive
portions not viewable on character-based displays. 
Hence the only complete and authoritative versions of the 
.B NCO Users Guide 
are the PDF (recommended), DVI, and Postscript versions at
<http://nco.sf.net/nco.pdf>, <http://nco.sf.net/nco.dvi>,
and <http://nco.sf.net/nco.ps>, respectively.
HTML and XML versions
are available at <http://nco.sf.net/nco.html> and
<http://nco.sf.net/nco.xml>, respectively.

If the
.B info
and
.B NCO
programs are properly installed at your site, the command
.IP
.B info nco
.PP
should give you access to the complete manual, except for the
TeX-intensive portions.

.BR ncap2 (1), 
.BR ncatted (1), 
.BR ncbo (1), 
.BR ncclimo (1), 
.BR nces (1), 
.BR ncecat (1), 
.BR ncflint (1), 
.BR ncz2psx (1), 
.BR ncks (1), 
.BR nco (1), 
.BR ncpdq (1), 
.BR ncra (1), 
.BR ncrcat (1), 
.BR ncremap (1), 
.BR ncrename (1), 
.BR ncwa (1) 

.SH HOMEPAGE
The 
.B NCO
homepage at <http://nco.sf.net> contains more information.
